Mountains should not be judged by altitude.
A ship does not sail with yesterday’s wind.
One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.
There are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices.
Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it’s hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.
Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it.
Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.
A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.
We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.
If you wait for inspiration, you’re not a writer, but a waiter.
Dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition.
But even the law cannot be in your bedroom at night.
I am somebody. I am me. And I don’t need anybody to make me somebody.
Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.
If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.
You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that is how much of a hole you leave when you’re gone.
The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.
Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.
There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.
A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realists, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very old or very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads.